Hunter Consulting helps organizations in the social sector to deliver the results they promise.

Children’s Aid Society

INTRODUCTION:

This case study describes the major strategic considerations that drove the redesign of New York’s Children’s Aid Society, one of the most respected and venerable direct service agencies in the city. It illustrates that bold leadership and “out of the box” thinking is necessary to move an organization out of its comfort zone in order to service clients more effectively – and achieve societally important results.

FIRST PARAGRAPH:

The Children’s Aid Society of New York City (CAS) has a hundred-plus year history of wanting to serve New York’s children and their families in every conceivable way. To do so it has been running dozens of city-wide and neighborhood-based programs in areas as diverse as health clinics, foster care services, preschool programs, after school programming, tutoring, mentoring, a summer camp, employment services, and more – earning appreciation from city government, neighborhood groups, and the families and individuals it served. Its work was captured in the mission it long had held: “The Children’s Aid Society provides comprehensive support for children in need, from birth to young adulthood, and for their families, to fill the gaps between what children have and what they need to thrive.”

CASE STUDIES

ROCA, Inc.

INTRODUCTION: Roca was founded in 1988 in order to address teen pregnancy and youth violence in Chelsea. Gradually, Roca increased the scope of its work and broadened the range of young people it served, building new programs as funding became available. By the mid-nineties Roca served the Greater Boston area – a region that includes...

Our Piece of the Pie

In its 2004 theory of change workshop, Our Piece of the Pie (Hartford, CT), then known as Southend Community Services, realized that its legacy program of elderly services, and also its city-wide day care centers, no longer bore any relation to its evolving mission to help inner-city, low-income young people successfully transition to adulthood

WINGS for kids

INTRODUCTION: This case study shows the key role that having a robust theory of change plays in bringing an organization from the point where it believes it has a good product to where it builds the capacity to codify its program, manage implementation and service delivery to drive outcomes, learns from systematic data collection and...

Children’s Aid Society

INTRODUCTION: This case study describes the major strategic considerations that drove the redesign of New York’s Children’s Aid Society, one of the most respected and venerable direct service agencies in the city. It illustrates that bold leadership and “out of the box” thinking is necessary to move an organization out of its comfort zone in...

The Center for Employment Opportunities, Inc

INTRODUCTION: (NEW YORK, NY) This case illustrates how the Center for Employment Opportunities, headquartered in New York City but working in three states and seven legal jurisdictions, moved the concept of accountability from one of compliance with funders’ demands to a fully internalized one that focuses on its reason for existing – and in doing so...